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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23767162">Dressed in red</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/verywhale/pseuds/verywhale'>verywhale</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Joker (2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Compliant, M/M, References to Canon, Selfcest, Sharing Clothes, Suicidal Thoughts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 18:27:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,749</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23767162</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/verywhale/pseuds/verywhale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joker takes Arthur's clothes to build himself an outfit for Murray show.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arthur Fleck/Joker (Joker 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dressed in red</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>One more domestic self-cest angst by yours truly. 💓🃏🌼</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">It’s Thursday morning, and Arthur is visibly shaking. Sometimes he thinks that call has happened in a dream, while he’s been lying limp on his mother’s bed—one hand inside his briefs, another lazily holding a cigarette; smoke filling up his head, already hazy and empty and almost somewhere else. Sometimes he imagines coming over at the studio and getting surrounded by dozens of laughs, vile and bewildered, followed by him falling into the mud at the back door. That lady has called him again last evening, to remind him that <em>yes, we await you on the show tomorrow,</em> and her cheerful voice has been tinted with confusion at his repeated questions. It’s Thursday morning, and instead of preparing, Arthur sits on the couch, sweaty palms restlessly running over his face and hair.</p>
<p class="western">There’s rustling and grunting that tickles the back of Arthur’s ears, and loud exhales that send another wave of spasms over his body. He sits on his knees, wearing nothing but Arthur’s old jeans and makeup. His hands are deep in the box, impatiently looking for something to hide his bones under. Arthur’s mouth is long and his eyes are in a daze when he turns over to watch him. His face muscles are tense under the paint, and so are his ribs and vertebrae, nearly tearing that useless skin, grainy and fluttering like white noise on the TV. Smoke turns translucent and his hair turns golden and shapeless in the rising sun. The floor blooms with countless shades of brown, grey and blue as he tosses the clothes over his shoulder. It reminds him of the tiled ground in the park, late at autumn, littered with crusty fossils of summer while naked trees shudder at the sight of it.</p>
<p class="western">Something like pity clicks in Arthur’s head, and his brain sighs by itself upon looking at him in his search. Arthur knows he wants to look beautiful at the show, to make the cameras stare at them both. But he’s afraid that he has already put on the only remotely beautiful pieces from that box on himself. Arthur looks at his knees, wrapped in burgundy, still quivering wildly as he thinks of many things at once. He’s also ironed that shirt dotted with flowers, one of few items left from Carnival. They both miss Carnival, his racing eyes and framed smile. He’d been the most resilient among them, never breaking a sweat even after long running and dancing and beating. He could also be proud that he had been able to place smiles on people’s faces, something they both are still jealous of. And now he’s been lying dead in the subway car, torn to pieces and blended with its floor, forgotten by all with his tricks and jokes and happy tears.</p>
<p class="western">He stands up, arms to waist, some other residue of Carnival hanging off his shoulder—the jubilant yellow one. He now looks at the green shirt timidly pressed against the wall, hopelessly trying to appear as a painting. Arthur remembers cold hands of a cashier and chink of a coin when he has bought it, but not the shirt’s texture against his scrawny body or gliding of buttons under his fingers. He lets out a long whirlwind of smoke, crashing against the ceiling, before he lands his hands on that piece.</p>
<p class="western">That scraping jingle in Arthur’s ears, painfully similar to the voice on the other side of the phone, now moves into his throat. Orange ash grows black and falls at his feet while he buttons the shirt. At first Arthur thinks it’s just the illusion of sun and therefore asks him to step away from the window; but as he comes closer, that bright eye-piercing hue of teal doesn’t escape Arthur’s view. His hands bury themselves into hair once again, and sweat glints on his neck. Mossy green, normally boring and unexceptional, this shirt has suddenly flourished on him; and even these playful white circles have no longer been just pathetic attempts at making the shirt look more feisty. Unbothered by Arthur’s glare, he throws the vest on; and now he is but a living explosion, burning through Arthur’s eyes and right into his brain, already fuming with something more toxic than the cigarette smoke.</p>
<p class="western">“How d’you like it?” he asks, twirling around and paying no mind to Arthur’s eyes laced with red. “But do you have something other than jeans? I can’t show up on camera like this!”</p>
<p class="western">Arthur scoffs and reaches to take away his cigarette. He wants to say that he does like it, as the antsy heartbeat tells him, but the grip of disbelief on his neck chokes all words of approval. Arthur glances behind him, at the checkered walls and washed out flowery curtains. One push and he tears the room’s clothing off, and covers himself in it; and it glistens on him with its mismatched patterns, with saturation even the ghost of his mother wouldn’t remember. And his face also glistens with pride, as he knows that these lethargic shades bloom again when he touches and wears them, and wither when he hands them back to Arthur.</p>
<p class="western">A light knock on the knee wakes Arthur up, back in the room where the walls still have kept their capes, rusty brown and sickening yellow. Their looks meet, one of confusion and other of interest. His fingers are mimicking the rhythm of Arthur’s heart. “Give ‘em to me,” he says, and before Arthur realizes what he has meant, his hand is now clasping at the belt of Arthur’s pants.</p>
<p class="western">“What are you doing?” Arthur gasps rather than asks; shock suspending his arms in the air, too far away from his grasp. The second grin flashes across his face as he disjoints the zipper and pulls the pants away. He giggles at the sudden lack of resistance, at Arthur’s legs obediently extending by themselves while Arthur is mindlessly blinking and wheezing without sound. Chill runs over Arthur’s bare legs while everything above them is flushing and flickering. He leaves Arthur’s vest on, as he already has Carnival’s, and the jacket materializes under the wave of his arm—or Arthur just hasn’t noticed when he had retrieved it from the box beforehand.</p>
<p class="western">He sits on the coffee table while putting the suit on, and Arthur’s eyes squint with suspicion when his skinny white legs disappear in color. He hasn’t expected to see this strange miracle once again just within a few minutes, but it has unveiled itself right in front of him and he can’t avert his gaze. He leisurely sways, still looking at Arthur, making sure that <em>he looks, too,</em> that he sees his suit fade from parched maroon into blistering red. His arms slash the air and splatter the walls with this red, the same as the web of blood vessels covering Arthur’s view. There are only the words of misunderstanding popping in Arthur’s head now, and he smirks when he hears them.</p>
<p class="western">Arthur raises his hands just to drop them again, weak laughs erupting from his mouth. “I don’t get it,” he says. The way how his face droops after voicing it makes him look vulnerable. Arthur realizes that he’s left with nothing to wear for the show; but also that if he jumps at him while he’s distracted by dancing, and strips him off that suit, the color of his violent dreams will not stay on him. He frowns now, shakes his head and tries not to look. Red ghostly outlines still spin under his lids, with their melting triangles of eyes and bleeding shards of teeth.</p>
<p class="western">“I want to wear red too,” Arthur says—voice so weak, nothing more than a moan. He’s vanished somewhere behind the couch already, as only rhythmic taps of his bare feet and temperate humming reveals his existence. Arthur’s legs start shaking again, and not from cold. He lays back and tries to distract, so he decides to examine the table. But when he glances over it from the distance, he finds it to be strangely empty; even with the ashtray and the journal and another journal—is there something he might’ve missed ou—</p>
<p class="western">In a moment, all growsy sounds of his dancing die out and make room for one click of the hammer—quick and deranged and unexpectedly loud. The spasms inside Arthur’s skull stop screaming and bouncing, and gather around that spot where the barrel is brought to his nape. Arthur gulps only once before ceasing his breaths, ears numb and bridge of his nose wet from the pressure.</p>
<p class="western">“Are you sure that you want it?” he asks. His voice is everywhere above Arthur, around Arthur, inside Arthur where it beats against his ribs like a bird in a cage. He ruffles Arthur’s hair with the barrel, its ends brushing his knuckles. Arthur diverts his anxious gaze from one hollow spot on the wall, and towards the turned off TV set. And the revolver also shifts to the left, yet still held close to his skull. Arthur’s glance jumps back and forth, so the gun scratches his nape until it’s no longer cold but mellow and soothing, as the thoughts stop pulsing only around one narrow place. It slides up, against the hair growth, and then circles over the shape of the skull. When Arthur blinks—slowly, carefully—red fills the void in front of his closed eyes, and he doesn’t notice how he starts blinking more often. The barrel is now kissing the bare spot on his neck, and Arthur scarcely jerks the tips of his fingers, imitating his own around the gun.</p>
<p class="western">As if afraid to lose contact, he moves back through the scalp and traces the place behind Arthur’s ears where his skin is set on fire. He presses the entire body of the revolver to Arthur’s neck, and starts catching his rapid breaths, as quiet and shallow as he remembers from the times when the sun is set. His giggle is but jaws grinding and knocking against one another. He leans forward and his cheek meets Arthur’s. The gun is now held at his chest, right against where it flutters in panic. Arthur draws his hand—not to the weapon, but to the joint of red that carries it. And he feels and hears the grin growing on Arthur’s face as he grabs his sleeve and pulls, almost trying to tear it off and keep to himself.</p>
<p class="western">He repeats his question, and Arthur says yes.</p>
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